Google Search Referrals Drop After Site Down?

[Nova]

Hello,

Have a question, as always :-)

Last Thursday our website was down for 1-2 hours. We had to restore it from our local copy which has a slightly different layout (we did some redesign). Basically, we added a small piece of java script to all pages.

Right after that our referrals from google dropped by 20%. I am monitoring our logs every day for the last week and do not see any positive changes.

My questions are: if Google visits the website while the last in unavailable, is it bad? What could cause such sharp discrease in referrals? Our mass update?

Thanks,
Nova

[shri]

If the drop started on the 18th or 19th, the chances are the drop is a result of an algorithm tweak or a filter which has started affecting your site.

Check your results, have you degraded or are you in supplemental?

I've found the bot pretty forgiving and google does retry for several days or more before it starts degrading your site to supplemental results in my limited experience.